National Surface Cover¶

Disclaimer

Geoscape Australia believes this publication to be correct at the time of printing and does not accept responsibility for any consequences arising from the use of the information herein. Readers should rely on their own skill and judgement to apply information to particular issues.

This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior written permission of Geoscape Australia.

Overview¶

National Surface Cover is a raster dataset representing land cover categories across Australia. Urban Surface Cover has coverage in pre-defined urban locations across Australia at 2 metre resolution, while the National Surface Cover has complete national coverage at 30 metre resolution.

Geoscape Australia welcomes your feedback on the National Surface Cover Dataset. We also publish regular product development updates on our website (www.geoscape.com.au).

Release Summary¶

This product was released to customers on 23 December 2025 with data extracted on 17 November 2025.

This release is a full national data population for Version 1.8 of the National Surface Cover product, described by the National Surface Cover Product Description v1.8.

Any issues that have been identified for this release are described in the Issues section.

This release includes updates for the areas listed in the table below.

Locations of updated areas by State.¶
State	Location	Urban Area (km2)
NSW	Bayside Council	51
NSW	Blacktown City Council	194
NSW	Blue Mountains City Council	14
NSW	Burwood Council	7
NSW	Camden Council	33
NSW	Campbelltown City Council	13
NSW	Canterbury-Bankstown Council	109
NSW	Cessnock City Council	91
NSW	City of Canada Bay Council	20
NSW	City of Parramatta Council	84
NSW	Council of the City of Sydney	26
NSW	Cumberland Council	72
NSW	Fairfield City Council	102
NSW	Georges River Council	28
NSW	Hawkesbury City Council	45
NSW	Inner West Council	35
NSW	Ku-ring-gai Council	48
NSW	Lake Macquarie City Council	3
NSW	Lane Cove Municipal Council	10
NSW	Liverpool City Council	241
NSW	Maitland City Council	3
NSW	Mosman Municipal Council	9
NSW	North Sydney Council	10
NSW	Northern Beaches Council	70
NSW	Penrith City Council	250
NSW	Randwick City Council	36
NSW	Ryde City Council	41
NSW	Singleton Council	8
NSW	Strathfield Municipal Council	14
NSW	Sutherland Shire Council	2
NSW	The Council of the Municipality of Hunters Hill	6
NSW	The Council of the Shire of Hornsby	73
NSW	The Hills Shire Council	204
NSW	Tweed Shire Council	1
NSW	Unincorporated - Botany Bay Area	2
NSW	Unincorporated - Sydney Harbour Area	31
NSW	Waverley Council	9
NSW	Willoughby City Council	22
NSW	Wollondilly Shire Council	24
NSW	Woollahra Municipal Council	12
QLD	Brisbane City	592
QLD	Bundaberg Regional	103
QLD	Fraser Coast Regional	43
QLD	Gold Coast City	317
QLD	Ipswich City	247
QLD	Livingstone Shire	3
QLD	Logan City	2
QLD	Moreton Bay City	573
QLD	Noosa Shire	54
QLD	Redland City	31
QLD	Rockhampton Regional	71
QLD	Scenic Rim Regional	2
QLD	Sunshine Coast Regional	361
Total		4452

Spatial files of the updated areas are available upon request via support@geoscape.com.au.

Change Notifications¶

‘National’ Branding¶

Geoscape’s Urban Surface Cover product has transitioned to ‘National Surface Cover’, reflecting our focus on a smarter, safer and more productive Australia and our role in the national interest.

Versioning Update (Effective June 2026)¶

Beginning June 2026, all data products will transition to a standardised versioning format: MAJOR-MINOR-EXTRACT (e.g., 004-000-001). This approach provides a clear and consistent structure, making it easier for users to identify product versions and understand update levels at a glance. The change is intended to improve transparency, reduce ambiguity, and support more efficient integration and usage of our data products.

Issues¶

New Issues¶

No new issues to note.

Resolved Issues¶

No resolved issues to note.

Known Issues¶

The progress and status of known, ongoing issues are summarised below. For specific and further details on each issue, please refer to the Release Report identified in the ‘Release identified’ column.

Ongoing product issues¶

Release Identified	Theme - Issue Name	Issue Brief Description	Progress/Resolution	Status
Dec-16	Building - Tree heights near buildings and other trees	Terrain elevation values used in the calculation of tree heights have been found in some cases to be affected by the surrounding tall features such as buildings and other trees.	No update at this time.	Open
Apr-17	Urban and National Surface Cover - Shadow and Cloud	An increase in the amount of shadow found in the Surface Cover layer, in some circumstances, has impacted on the shape and height of buildings as well as surface cover and trees.	Geoscape has worked with its partners to limit the capture and use of imagery that contains significant cloud and shadow for future releases. The future maintenance programs will be targeting areas affected by significant cloud and shadow.	Open
Nov-21	Trees over-capture	On Buildings, it has been observed that there are some situations where significant portions of some roofs have been captured as tree features. This is different from actual tree overhang and may be due to some combination of building proximity to trees, dark roof colour and/or shadow across roofs. Tree features in Surface Cover, where they intersect with buildings, are retained and represented over building features. This is because tree over-hang does exist in the real world, and also to ensure these tree pixels correspond to the Trees product. In Dense, Shadowed and Water Areas, the spectral signature of these areas can incorrectly result in features being extracted as trees during remote sensing. Height calculation can help to exclude the majority of these during production, but where heights are determined to be greater than 2 metres they may persist.	We are working with our partner to limit these occurrences, as well as improving our processes to identify and correct the situations where they are present.	Open
Nov-21	Updates based on Tree and Buildings classes	Since November 2021 Updates are limited to Building, Tree and Unspecified Vegetation classes according to the captured aerial imagery for the Trees and Buildings products. If a building or tree pixel is no longer covered by building or trees features according to the update, it will be converted to Built-up Areas or Unspecified Vegetation, respectively. Where pixels are covered by Buildings, Trees or Unspecified Vegetation according to the update, they will be retained or updated accordingly.	Methods and sources to update additional Surface Cover classes beyond Building, Tree and Unspecified Vegetation are currently being investigated.
Jun-22	Over classification of building class	The building classification in areas updated for the November 2021 and March 2022 releases have not received the improved aerial building representation.	Resolved for updated areas in the June 2022 and November 2021 and March 2022 will be resolved in a future release.

Future Considerations¶

This section outlines enhancements or changes under consideration, but not planned into a specific release. For further details on future initiatives, please contact Geoscape Support.

Annex A – Release Counts¶